Catbird feathers,
tufts of fur on the grass.
The yard is silent—Onomato
She jerks my shirt out of my pants, tugs at my belt. The grazing of fingernails sets off ripples of gooseflesh, shattering my mellow. I wrest myself free and put my clothes back in place.
Carlotta pouts. “Now where do you think you’re going, honey? You still owe me and tomorrow just won’t do. So there’s a little errand you will run for me.”
“I’ll get you your money, Carlotta.”
“It’s too late for that, I’m afraid. Now I could take my little baggie of souvenirs from your visit last night and pass it along. I’m sure there’s someone who would be interested to know you were there. Drinking tequila. Smoking Havanas. Doing smack. Or would you prefer we just keep that our little secret?”
“You were there too.”
“Let me assure you, that’s not a problem.”
“Your fingerprints as well as mine are on the glass and the cigar.”
“My fingerprints? Airol Jones’s, you mean. As I recall, he handed you the glass, and the humidor.”
Damn, she’s right.
“I’m making it easy on you, honey. Just exchange one little package,” she brandishes a wad of bills, “for another little package. See the man.” She mentions a name that is more a moniker: Shrike. “Do this little favor for me and we’re even.” She wraps both arms around my waist, stuffs the wad of bills into one rear pocket, pinches my cheek through the other. “Run along now. The sooner you get back, the sooner we can dust our cigars. Now if I can’t convince you to do this, I have some very persuasive salesmen on the lot I’m sure could sell you on the idea. They are good closers, that you can believe.”
Like the bruiser I met on the way in? I can imagine the high-pressure tactics he might use.
Just yesterday, the mere mention of Shrike’s name sent me into a tailspin. With Nearvana soothing my nerves, I calmly say, “So where do I find this Shrike?”
“Last I heard, honey, he was running a stash house on the Miracle Mile.”
“That covers a lot of territory. Can you be more specific?”
“A month ago I could have. Lately, though, Shrike’s been keeping a low profile. ‘Don’t call him, he’ll call you?’ Except I’m in something of a bind, so you’ll have to find him. Big time detective that you are, it should be easy.”
Big time detective. More than ever I need that to be true if I’m to find Shrike. Gone to ground, as easy to find as fish lips, Ace and Spade said. If they with all their resources can’t find him, how can I, one man alone? My usual informants won’t help. Having resigned I no longer have any influence to offer them and they’re not known for their altruism. I drive around for a while meaning to ponder the alternatives, but all I do is waste precious gas. Finally, I simply head for the Miracle Mile.
After dark, even the fullest moon and brightest stars can’t compete with the neon, so the sky appears black. There are a few people on the sidewalks, mostly with something to sell, and more cruise the street—the buyers. They drive just above idle in their Continentals and Blazers.
Just another lemming, I’m cruising, too: for Hector, for this Nicky whom Carlotta said he was connected with. And for Shrike. Not that I want to find him. I don’t. I must find him.
There’s enough space in front of the Mercy Mission for Old Paint but I don’t have what it takes to parallel park it so I simply steer in as best I can. I turn up my topcoat collar against the drizzle and plod along the sidewalk. The buildings seem to lean toward the street, hemming me in. Seemingly from nowhere, hookers and pushers start toward me, their leering faces garish in the neon. The homeless, drunks, and derelicts beg me for a cigarette. For once, I don’t want one myself. Nearvana satisfies all cravings, except the craving for more Nearvana.
Catty-corner across the street, a noisy game of three-card monte is in progress in front of the coffee shop. The dealer and his shill look like they were born and raised on the Miracle Mile, but I’ve made them. Ace and Spade, back on their undercover assignment. They mustn’t see me! I make for the Algonquian. A man slumped across the doorway grabs my ankle.
“Help me, man,” he says. “You got a dollar? Anything you can spare? I need to fix, man, I’m hurtin’ bad.”
“Let me go.” I tear loose and cleave to the wall, slide along to the pawnshop hoping to duck in there but it’s closed. Only the night trade window is open. Panicking, I continue to inchworm my way south along the wall and try the plasma bank but it’s closed, too. Two men locked in mortal combat block my entrance to the neighboring King Phil.
I push, then pull on the next door I come to. It opens and a little bell tinkles overhead. Air stuffy with smoke, petrochemicals, and incense fills my nose.
“Oh, no,” cries a throaty voice that’s vaguely familiar.
Lix Gemini. I’ve worked my way down to the tattoo parlor.
“Get out,” he says.
“Hey, Lix.”
“I said ‘get out!’” He backs away from me. Beaded fringes sway from a balding hip-length suede vest. A tank shirt under the sleeveless garment leaves his lean arms bare. Pale skin stretched over small bunched muscles is blue-white. Ankh and peace symbol pendants hang from his neck on bead necklaces. He looks like a ragged remnant of the seventies. At his small feet booted in scuffed snake skin, the ink I spilled on the floor is a dry but still Technicolor Rorschach.
“No, look, you got it all wrong,” I tell him. “I’m not here to hassle ya.” He’s got to let me hang here just a little while longer. Ace and Spade won’t man that corner all night. In fact, they could soon be going off shift. What time is it, anyway? Nearly eleven on my watch. “In fact, I, uh, I feel bad about the other night. That’s uh, why I came back. To make it up to you. Pay you for the ink. What do I owe you?”
He was right, the stuff is expensive. The small bills in my wallet won’t cover it. A big bill from the stake Carlotta gave me will, though.
“That’s some wad you got there,” Lix Gemini says.
“Huh?”
“Money. You’re loaded.”
“Oh, it’s not mine. I’m just, uh, running a little errand. For a friend.” The words nearly choke me.
“Uh huh. I understand.”
“No, it’s not what you think.”
“Hey, you don’t have to explain nothing to me.”
Indeed I don’t. But a peep out the door shows Ace and Spade are still holding down their corner. I need to keep the conversation going so I can hang here a while longer. “Say, you don’t have any tattoos yourself. What’s this, a case of the cobbler’s kids going barefoot?” Other than the multiple piercings he has no distinguishing marks.
Lix blinks obsidian eyes. “Cobbler? What’s pie got to do with it?”
“You’re so busy working you can’t give yourself a tattoo?”
“Oh, I’m busy enough, but that ain’t it. I can’t do myself, I got to get someone else. I just can’t get anyone else to do me.” He looks up at me through his lashes. “You want to take a poke at me?”
He may not mean that the way it sounds. Nevertheless I don’t like the direction this is taking. Time to be moving on. “So, where can I find Nicky?”
He ambles to a shelf tucked into a corner, returns with an apple and a carving knife. One-handed, he cuts a wedge from the apple and eats it before replying. “I thought you was looking for Hector.”
“And I thought you didn’t know where he was.”
His eyes on the apple, Lix says, “I don’t.”
“So I didn’t ask you about Hector, I asked you about Nicky.”
He considers that a moment. “And you’ll leave my name out of it? I got to live here, you know.”
“Just tell me. Where can I find Nicky?”
He gives me a sly smile. “Only one by that name on the Mile worth talking about is Nikki Saint Clair. She dances at the Metro.”
The Metro is at the top of the Mile. “Thanks a heap, Lix Gemini. Be seeing you.”
“I hope not.”
I exit the tattoo parlor and start back north to the Metro. Not so fast. Ace and Spade are still at work. Putting in a little O.T.? They want Shrike badly, but I’d better find him first. Carlotta said he runs a stash house here. Lots of good candidates for that on this street but I can hardly go door-to-door asking. Think, think.
The fight in front of the King Phil has broken up. Nikki St. Clair will have to wait. I slip inside.
The tavern is bathed in a blood-red light usually reserved for darkrooms. Drinkers line the bar from end to end; more fill the banquettes and tables. Toward the rear, small-time dealers without their own cell phones vie for the pay phone.
Phone. I was supposed to call Heidi Quince. At the first break in the action, I drop my coin.
“Heidi? It’s Will Mansion.”
“Will, I’m so glad you called. I’ve been worried about you all day.”
“I’m fine. Are you OK? It’s not every night a woman finds herself ducking gunfire.”
“Don’t remind me. I’m still shaking. I have nightmares.”
Join the club.
A broad-shouldered man in a black leather coat and cap comes to stand very close to me and fixes me with feral bloodshot eyes. He drapes an arm over the top of the phone.
“So there haven’t been any further ... incidents?”
Heidi says, “No. I’m fine, really. Tell me where to meet you and I’ll show you I’m perfectly all right.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it. I don’t want you down here.” I smile politely at my leather-coated companion.
“Where is ‘here’?” Heidi asks.
“The Miracle Mile.”
There’s a pause before she says, “I don’t like you being there.”
“Well, this is where the trail led.”
With a curled lip, the leather-coated man says, “Now,” and I mouth, “Just a minute.”
“The trail to Hector?” Heidi asks.
“Yes, and I have a lead. Someone named Nikki St. Clair.”
There’s another pause before she says, “You’re not giving up, are you?”
Leather Coat clasps my wrist with a gloved hand that clamps tight as a talon.
“Maybe the next time I talk to you I’ll be able to tell you I found him.”
“Will, it sounds dangerous. Get away from there. Meet me—”
“Gotta go.” Leather Coat’s grip is cutting off my circulation. He forces me to hang up. “All yours,” I tell him. He growls, I retreat.
A thin man in an equally thin Windbreaker jostles me. Under his arm he carries a VCR, its cables flapping like rudely severed umbilical cords. “Stolen” pops to the forefront of my brain.
“Hey, man,” he says to me. “Got a helluva bargain for you here. Four head, full-track audio, dual deck.” Rheumy eyes in a drawn face beseech me. “Just two bills.”
“Sorry, man,” I tell him. “I don’t even have a TV.”
He wastes no more time with me but approaches one patron after another, holding out the VCR and having a brief conversation. All end in a head shake. No one, apparently, will buy despite the fact that the King Phil’s clientele is known to appreciate a bargain, never mind the merchandise’s provenance. VCR man tries Leather Coat, my friend at the pay phone. He also shakes his head. But he points to the door. VCR Man smiles, nods vigorously, and leaves.
When Leather Coat reclaims his seat at the bar, I take off my watch, put it in my pocket, and sidle up to him.
“Hey, Bud, I got a little problem I think you can help me with,” I tell him. “See, I’m getting desperate. Can you help me?”
He narrows his eyes and looks me up and down. “What do I look like, the Red Cross?”
“No, no, man. You heard me on the phone. I can’t find my man, my regular man. You look like someone willing to do business.”
“Oh, so now I look like a businessman.”
“Come on, buddy, don’t play games. I’m looking to go to Heaven.”
“Keep buggin’ me, man, I’ll send you to hell.”
“You know what I mean. I want to experience Nearvana. They tell me you’re the man. What do you say?”
“I say you want to go to Heaven, you got to pay the price.”
“Well, see, that’s just it. I’m a little tapped. Got cash flow problems, you know? My regular man, he understands. He’ll take something on trade.” I fish my watch from my pocket. “I got this. It’s worth something. It’s Swiss.”
“Oh, so now I look like a pawn shop. Try down the street, asshole.”
“Aw, come on, man. Give me a break. I’m hurting.”
“You’re breaking my heart. Cash only, dirtbag. Now get out of my face.” He picks up his drink.
“Come on, man, you gotta help me.” Mimicking the man who grabbed me in front of the Algonquian, I whine, “I need to fix, man, I’m hurting bad.”
My distress is genuine and far more convincing than any con I’ve ever pulled because Leather Coat gives me a long look and says, “Go see a movie.”
“Ah, man—”
“I said, go see a movie. Now beat it or you’ll really be hurting.”
With my hands up in surrender, I back away and leave the King Phil. A quick glance up the street is reassuring: the monte game is gone, the sidewalk in front of the coffee shop clear.
Opposite the coffee shop stands the Paradise Theater, its 1920s plaster facade crumbling, its ticket window shuttered. Like single-screen theaters across the country, it has been long abandoned. The last time I was here might have been the ‘70s for midnight showing of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
“Go see a movie,” said Leather Coat. VCR Man did and it must have been a real sleeper. He sits on the ground slumped against the wall below a faded poster for “The Secret of DG,” chin on chest, no VCR in sight.
“Where’s Shrike?” I ask him.
VCR Man looks up with eyes that don’t quite focus and jerks a thumb down the alley. I peer down the dark passageway but don’t see anything. Hugging the wall, I take a few cautious steps over stinking piles that rustle alarmingly. A shadow moves. Out of what must be a learned response to dark alleys I go for my piece although I’m not aware of being afraid. Good thing I’m not; I don’t have the weapon on me. Anyway, nothing jumps out at me except vermin.
There is no one in the alley and no VCRs, nothing in the vacant lot beyond except knee-high weeds. The north side of the coffee shop at my back and the south side of the theater opposite are both windowless brick walls, each broken only by a side door. The coffee shop’s side door has an eye-level wire glass window and a doorknob. While the theater’s side door may have once had a window, it’s since been opaqued, and there is no doorknob.
While I stand before it wondering how to get in, I hear an electromechanical click. Overhead I spot the red eye of a night vision surveillance camera tucked in the eaves. As if by magic, the door opens. When I step inside, it closes behind me just as magically.
Inside, it is no brighter or warmer than the alley. Red spots glow in the corners as if the place were infested with hot-eyed rats. I bump into something thigh-high: a theater seat. Cold metal presses against my temple.
“Mansion, if you got a prayer, say it. You about to die.” The disembodied voice is more like a croak. Shrike! The Nearvana high from Carlotta’s evaporates. It drops me faster than a runaway elevator, leaving me with the same hollow stomach.
“Shrike, you got me wrong. Carlotta sent me.”
“Sure.”
“I swear it, I’m just here to make a buy.” I couldn’t be any more sincere if my life depended on it. And it does. “You got to believe me. I have a package I’m supposed to exchange for another package.” A kid making his first score wouldn’t whimper this badly, but I don’t care. This isn’t a sting and I don’t have to impress him, don’t ever have to see him again. I just have to get out of here alive.
“You got half a second to convince me this ain’t a bust.”
“Bust? I’m not even armed.”
The pressure of the gun barrel against my temple eases off. A shadow moves into my line of sight: a tall man with a sharp nose, hard glittering eyes, and a swarthy face under a black leather slouch hat. A dark raincoat hangs on his thin frame. Shrike. He holds a semiautomatic pistol big as a quart milk carton. Its T-shaped silhouette suggests a Cobray M-11. Fitted with an extra-long magazine, the weapon is mean and ugly as a rabid Rottweiler and about as easy to control.
Beside him a skinny junkie points an automatic with a Swiss-cheesed barrel shroud at my chest. A TEC-9 maybe, just as nasty.
Shrike says, “Lose the coat. Up against the wall.” He smacks my head with his weapon.
Having never been on the receiving end of a pat-down, I’ve failed to appreciate the enfeebling humiliation the subject must feel. Shrike, however, capitalizes on it. He takes his time, feels me up like he enjoys it. Hums. Takes my wallet, keys, small change, and Carlotta’s bankroll. He’s got the cash, he could kill me now.
“You in the business now?” Shrike asks.
“No, I ... just owe Carlotta some money.”
“You using?”
“Yes, yes!” Whatever! I turn my head to catch his next move and see him pick up my topcoat, go through the pockets, find Overshort’s cigarette pack. Shrike chuckles. His lieutenant wags his gun at me and I turn my face back to the wall. Sparks of phantom light signal an oncoming flashback.
“What you got here?” Shrike holds a cigarette under my nose. It’s the Nearvana sample Carlotta’s steerer gave me in the Knockers parking lot, the one I swapped for a cigarette from Overshort’s pack. “You ain’t done this yet?”
“I was saving it for when times get rough.” Like now, when my vision mists, blurs, and I find myself spinning toward Terminal Road in the strobing light.
Shrike laughs. “Yeah, you new at this. You find out, it all rough times. OK, maybe you on the level, but I ain’t falling for no narco trap.”
“No trap, I swear.” Terminal Road, it’s a trap, it’s a trap!
“Prove it.” From his raincoat, Shrike produces a plastic straw, sealed at both ends. “Do it.”
“What is it?” I ask, but I know damn well. It’s “HIS,” heroin-in-a-straw.
“Just do it.” He opens the straw, shoves it up my right nostril, and clamps the left closed with his thumb. “Snort, sucker.”
Death by OD, that’s the plan. Smart. I’ll be just another dead junkie. I squeeze my eyes shut but the light and noise of little explosions only come faster. My ears throb with the beating of a vulture’s wings, his shrill caw. I don’t want to die! Tears trickle down my cheeks.
“C’mon, Mansion, breathe!”
His second pokes my kidney. Though I intend to take the tiniest whiff, I breathe deeply because oh, yes, Nearvana—I want it! Something powdery goes up my nose. I sink to my knees and wait to die.
But I don’t die. Instead, the nausea, dizziness, and disorientation that signal a flashback subside. Tension ebbs away, respiration slows. Light-spirited rather than lightheaded, I open my eyes. The cackling vulture has taken flight; there is only Shrike in his raincoat, laughing.
He counts Carlotta’s cash. “You short,” he says.
The money I gave to Lix Gemini! “A few dollars. But ... but ... I got something worth more than that.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“Information. Uh, you know that monte game on the corner? It’s a plant.”
“Shit, you might be all right, Mansion.” Shrike tells his associate to give me the dope. “Better’n that other errand boy Carlotta had, that Hector.”
“Oh yeah? What’d he do?” I ask.
“Sonofabitch stiffed me, big time,” Shrike says. “Pay me with some worthless junk, man must have some kind of death wish. Tell you what. You find him for me, I just might let you live.”
Shrike sweeps toward the exit. On the wall to the left of the door, a small green light glows above a chest-high panel studded with ten buttons. Shrike fingers the buttons, the light changes to red, and the door opens. His second flings me and my coat out the door. With a noisy flap of fabric, Shrike and his second are gone and I am alone in the alley. I nod off until a fit of shivers shakes me awake and prompts me to pick up my coat. I return to the street, calm, relaxed, just another stoner with a load of heroin in my pocket. Miracle Mile is quiet, dark, save for the sputtering neon of the Metro at the corner.
I’m supposed to go there, although I can’t exactly remember why until I reach the door. It’s hung with a full-length, full color poster of the headliner, a tall redhead, damn near naked with a hungry look that is both daring and dangerous. Nikki St. Clair. Oh yes, that’s why I’m here. Hector’s “Nicky.”
The door takes a hard shove to open, the place is so densely packed. I elbow my way closer to the front through a fog of cigarette smoke. Most of the men, transfixed by the dancer currently on stage, let me nudge by. Those who feel I should stay back give me dirty looks and curses but no one picks a fight. They sit or stand in a trance, numb and dumb.
I worm my way to a spot with a good view of the runway. The man at my side takes one step to the left to put some space between us and for a moment there is eye contact. His eyes are red, his round pale face sheened with sweat in the close, smoky atmosphere.
A roving cigarette girl approaches wearing only a G-string. Instead of a bra she wears a halter-slung tray of smokes. “Cigars, cigarettes?” she asks.
“Got any premium brands?” the man next to me asks.
“Toward the back.”
The man hands over a large bill. Even in a place like this it’s an exorbitant amount for a pack. He reaches in to the back of the tray and takes a long time about making his selection. The cigarette girl waits patiently, her mouth stretched in a rictus of feigned pleasure.
Oh I see what’s going on here. The cigarette girl is naked behind her tray. A bill buys a feel. Our eyes meet and in hers I see hopelessness, resignation, and loathing.
“You?” she asks when he’s done.
I shake my head.
With raised eyebrows she asks, “You sure there ain’t something here you want?”
“I’m sure.”
She shrugs and shoulders her way into the throng.
The dancer leaves the stage and the crowd hoots and stamps for the next act. The house lights dim, heavy metal rock music comes up. A spotlight hits the curtain and follows the woman who strides across the stage dressed in a tight white nurse’s uniform. No nurse who ever attended me wore a uniform this form-fitting, much less shiny red four-inch heels.
Nikki St. Clair is tall, especially from this angle. Toned, with slim arms. Strong legs long enough to wrap around a man twice stretch from the bottom of her micro mini skirt all the way to the floor. She peels her nurse’s costume to reveal something else the poster didn’t show: she is abundantly tattooed. Flowers vine up her calves. A firebird is spread eagled across her shoulder blades. A pair of winged serpents with forked tongues forms a caduceus from G-string to navel. I saw the same picture on Lix Gemini’s wall, a custom design, and picture her stretched out naked on the old barber chair while he applies it, then picture her simply stretched out naked.
She removes the rest of her costume. The men fall silent again, mouths firmly shut, arms crossed over chests or bellies. No one speaks, no one smiles, as if the smallest movement would betray arousal.
Which they must be because Nikki Saint Clair is good. Oh, she has all the usual moves. She flows from a backbend into a split, turns her back on the audience, bends from the waist, and shakes her white buttocks. Turns again and, perched precariously on those spike heels, sinks into a squat so deep her thighs are at right angles to her hips. Swirls her hands around her body, shivers in ecstasy. Rubs her crotch against the pole at stage left, then at stage right in a pantomime of humping. Her eyes are not fixed on the back wall or staring off into space, turned inward in self-absorption, or glazed in a drugged stupor. They bore into mine, tell me this performance is for me, only for me. My pulse pounds with the heavy metal beat. An erection presses against my trousers. Even my skin throbs. A night with her would reduce us both to cinders, I am convinced.
Her act draws to a close and with a roar, the crowd tosses bills of large denomination onto the stage. Nikki throws kisses and disappears through the curtains, only to reappear on the floor wrapped in the customary short kimono. She is not to touch the patrons, nor they her, but that doesn’t stop anyone any more than it restricted the cigarette girl’s trade.
Nikki comes to stand before us. Bills fan out of her belt and neckline like parrot feathers. She glances at the sweaty man next to me, then at me, and I feel her thigh press against mine.
“Did you like Nikki’s act?” she asks me.
“Yeah,” the man at my side answers breathlessly, and slips a fifty into her robe.
“How ‘bout you, Good Lookin’?” Nikki asks me.
“I’ll come backstage and tell you how much,” I reply.
She licks her lips and squeezes against me, close enough to smell her: sweat and pheromones.
“Nikki would like that, sugar, but if she let you, she’d have to let all these other guys.”
“But I’m special. I’m a friend of Hector Waltann’s.”
“Don’t know any Hector Waltann.” She steps away and I grab her arm. “Hey!”
“Lix Gemini said you did.”